Alvarion Supplies WiMAX in Angola

Mundo Startel is rolling out WiMAX services throughout Angola using Alvarion's BreezeMAX solution at the 3.6 GHz frequency band.


Mundo will provide Internet access services to both enterprises and residential homes. This nationwide WiMAX network also provides access to remote businesses, fueling economic growth for the region.


Mundo Startel is partially owned by Telecom Namibia, along with a number of other local partners, who have committed to invest over $55 million in Angola to deploy 100,000 wireless lines providing voice and high speed data services in Luanda and throughout the country.
http://www.alvarion.com

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MEF Announces Key Appointments

The Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) announced the results of its 2010 Board of Directors elections.

President: Nan Chen

Chairman: Dennis Kruse, Vice President Network Solutions, Orange Business Services,

COO: Kevin Vachon

Treasurer: Matt Squire, Chief Technology Officer, Hatteras Networks

Director and Secretary: Arie Goldberg, Chief Technologist, CEO and Co-founder, Omnitron Systems,

Other board appointments are, in alphabetic order: Margaret Chiosi, Executive Director of Optics and Ethernet Development, AT&T; Craig Easley, Vice President of Marketing, Matisse Networks; Lionel Florit, Senior Manager, Cisco Systems; Robert Kuse, Transport Planning & Architecture, Cox Communications; Kevin O'Toole, Vice President of Product Management & Strategy, Comcast; Ralph Santitoro, Director of Carrier Ethernet Market Development, Fujitsu and Michael Joseph Volgende, Director Global Ethernet Services, Verizon.

Zhao Huiling, Vice President China Telecom Beijing Research Institute, also joins the team as a second Advisory Director alongside Robert Metcalfe, Ethernet inventor.

The MEF also announced a new format for its service provider awards program, with added categories to reflect the significant industry advances in Carrier Ethernet services deployment and the diverse and expanding range of service providers taking advantage part in this growth segment of the telecommunications industry. The MEF Carrier Ethernet Service Provider Awards -- 2009, judged by panels of leading regional and global telecoms analysts, will be offered in the same three global regions as before -- Americas, EMEA and APAC -- with four categories to choose from.  These include Best Marketing, Best Service Innovation and Best Service Portfolio, while the fourth category, Service Provider of the Year, will be awarded to the provider in each region with the highest cumulative score for all the above categories, with additional consideration for service coverage. http://www.MetroEthernetForum.org

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Dell'Oro: Ethernet Switch Market to Begin Rebounding in 2010

The total Ethernet Switch market is forecast to decline almost 20 percent in 2009, the sharpest decline since 2001, before it begins to rebound in 2010, according to a new report from the Dell'Oro Group. The report indicates that 10 GE and data center will be catalysts for growth during the next few years.

"Given the severity of the decline during the first quarter of 2009, it will be difficult for the market to rebound quickly to the revenue and port levels we saw in 2008," said Alan Weckel, Director of Ethernet Switch Market Research at Dell'Oro Group. "We believe that the data center will be one of the largest drivers for growth beyond 2009, as the market is expected to begin expanding again in 2010. However, it will be difficult for the market to return to the robust growth rates it enjoyed over the past 5 years," stated Weckel.

The report indicates that Cisco's move into the server market, HP's expansion of its data center portfolio as well as IBM's entrance into the Ethernet Switch market, are examples that some vendors will approach a more holistic product offering for the data center going forward.
http://www.delloro.com/

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FiberLight Raises $13 Million for its Network Rollout

FiberLight, which owns a 500,000-mile fiber network in key growth areas of the United States raised $13 million from CoBank in the company's first ever debt offering in the capital markets. The debt is comprised of a $10 million note and a $3 million revolving line of credit.

FiberLight's strength lies in its fiber assets throughout the southern half of the United States from Baltimore, Maryland to Miami and west as far as San Francisco. FiberLight's product offering includes a full portfolio of optical connectivity including dark fiber, Managed Wavelengths, Metro Ethernet from 10MB to 10Gig, and traditional SONET connectivity.
http://www.fiberlight.com

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Toshiba Announces 64GB SDXC Card

Toshiba launched its 64GB SDXC Memory Card

-- first memory card compliant with the SD Memory Card Standard Version 3.00, UHS104, which brings a new level of ultra-fast read and write speeds to NAND flash based memory cards: a maximum write speed of 35MB per second, and a read speed of 60MB per second.
http://memory.toshiba.com

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Altair Announces LTE RF Transceiver Availability

Altair Semiconductor announced the immediate availability of its LTE RF transceiver, the FourGee-6150.


The FourGee-6150 is an LTE-TDD RF transceiver which, in addition to LTE, also complements Altair's baseband processors for mobile WiMAX and XGP, offering a complete, turn-key 4G solution to handheld devices makers across the industry. The device is implemented with cost effective CMOS process technology and based on a single conversion architecture.
http://www.altair-semi.com

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WatchGuard Acquires BorderWare Technologies

Seattle-based WatchGuard Technologies will acquire privately-held BorderWare Technologies, a leading e-mail and Web security content and threat management platform provider for mid-sized enterprises, government and service providers. Financial terms were not disclosed. BorderWare, which is based in Toronto, was founded in 1994 and has 90 employees.


No immediate changes will be made to BorderWare product offerings, customer support and channel programs. Future new products from WatchGuard or BorderWare will be announced upon their availability.
http://www.watchguard.com/

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WeFi Secures More Funding for Community Wi-Fi

WeFi Inc. announced a series B funding round to support its community-based global Wi-Fi network.


WeFi automatically connects the user to the best connection available. WeFi always seeks to connect users to Wi-Fi access points where Internet access has already been verified by other WeFi-enabled devices - dubbed "community-verified spots" - in a growing network of 30 million access points recorded. In addition, WeFi recently released its first generation of carrier-grade solutions for offloading mobile Internet traffic from congested 2G, 3G and in the future 4G networks onto Wi-Fi access points.

WeFi recently launched a version of its software for the Google Android mobile operating system, an integration with mobile VoIP provider fring, and the launch of a mobile entertainment and communications portal.


The funding round was led by venture capital firms Lightspeed Venture Partners and Pitango Venture Capital. The funding will support WeFi's business and financial needs, and is being allocated toward expanding development, marketing efforts, and strengthening strategic business partnerships. Financial terms were not disclosed.


WeFi was established in February 2006 and has R&D in Israel. http://www.wefi.com

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Digital Living Network Alliance Expands TV Certifications

The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) has certified more than 400 TV models in the last three months, bringing the total number of DLNA Certified TVs to 669. TVs bearing the "DLNA Certified" logo are interoperable with the complete digital home, allowing consumers to experience a more convenient way to enjoy their digital content. With a DLNA Certified television in the living room, consumers may enjoy audio, video or pictures, from other DLNA Certified products, such as mobile phones, digital cameras or PCs. http://www.dlna.org/

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Verizon's FiOS TV Users Can Tweet, Update Facebook with Social TV Widgets

Verizon is enhancing its recently launched Facebook and Twitter Widgets for its FiOS TV service with additional features that give subscribers even more ways to connect with others while watching TV. The enhancements include using the onscreen keyboard to send Tweets and the ability for subscribers to update their Facebook status with personalized messages.


Verizon said that inn just three weeks since it introduced the new Twitter and Facebook Widgets, millions of Tweets and Facebook gallery photos have been viewed by FiOS TV subscribers on their TV screens.


"FiOS TV subscribers are enthusiastically embracing our new social TV experiences and are asking for more," said Shawn Strickland, vice president, marketing for Verizon Telecom. "We're very quickly adding new features so that users can create and send more personalized information, in addition to viewing content. FiOS TV subscribers can count on us to continually expand their enjoyment of social networking on TV with innovative, interactive applications that cable can't deliver."


FiOS TV subscribers with Facebook accounts already can log in to Facebook through the FiOS TV Widget to view their own photos and view their friends' photos and status updates. These subscribers can now also use an onscreen keyboard to update their Facebook status with personalized messages so they can connect and share with their friends online.
http://www.verizon.com/

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Sipera Offers New Appliance for Security of VoIP and Unified Communications

Sipera Systems introduced its UC-Sec 100 security appliance for helping small and medium businesses (SMBs) to ensure privacy and threat protection of their VoIP and unified communications.


The UC-Sec 100 delivers SIP trunk termination and SIP trunk security to decrease costs for connectivity to the public switched telephone network. SIP Systems said it enables up-to-the-minute protection against VoIP and UC security vulnerabilities and zero day threats, including toll fraud eavesdropping, and data theft.
http://www.sipera.com

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NTT Com to Offer Router-less Corporate VPN

NTT Communications will begin offering corporate customers of its Arcstar IP-VPN services in Japan the option of establishing easy, cost-effective VPN connectivity without the use of routers.


The new "Router-less Plan" will provide customers with router functions via the Arcstar IP-VPN network. Accessing NTT Com's VPN will simply require PCs to be connected to network terminals, without the use of routers. As a result, enterprises will be able to reduce the burden of managing their own networks, including both installation and running costs.


The service can be combined with NTT Com's BizCITY software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, providing the customer with access to a wide variety of network services but without the need to manage in-house servers.


The monthly charge for the Router-less Plan is 52,500 yen (including tax) using conventional Ethernet access for committed bandwidth of 0.5 Mbps, or 84,000 yen (including tax) using "Burst 10 Ethernet" access for committed bandwidth of 1 Mbps, burstable up to 10 Mbps. Both charges include a 10,500 yen discount off regular access charges. Network and access-line setup charges are separate.
http://www.ntt.com/index-e.html

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NTT Com Deploys Alcatel-Lucent for MPLS IPv4/IPv6 VPN Service

NTT Communications has deployed Alcatel-Lucent's service router solution as the base for its MPLS-based IP VPN service, which now supports both IPv4 and IPv6 ( dual stack mode) for enterprise users. The service is Japan's first commercial IPv6 compatible IP-VPN service based on MPLS.


NTT Com first deployed the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router (SR) in 2007 to support its IP-VPN IPv4-based service. NTT Com has again chosen Alcatel-Lucent to upgrade its network to allow both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic to be used on a single network. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"This represents a key milestone in the Japanese market with NTT Com launching its IPv4/IPv6 dual stack service," said Martin Jordy, president of Alcatel-Lucent's Japan activities. "With our market-leading service router solution, we will continue to help NTT Com and its enterprise customers take advantage of the efficient and reliable advanced network services offered with this next generation Internet protocol."http://www.ntt.co.jphttp://www.alcatel-lucent.com/

• In July, Alcatel-Lucent announced that NTT DOCOMO had selected its Ethernet transmission solution to provide the backhaul network of its Long Term Evolution (LTE) service. Financial terms were not disclosed. Alcatel-Lucent said its packet optical gear will provide NTT DOCOMO with cost-effective and flexible Ethernet-based aggregation and transport from the base stations to the core network. Specifically, the Alcatel-Lucent solution, based on the 1850 Transport Service Switch (TSS) and its universal switching technology, will provide multipoint Ethernet connections between cell sites supported by strong operations, administration and maintenance capabilities, as well as carrier-class protection and network management.

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